News In Brief

New casualties were reported on both sides as Palestinians and Israelis tried to comply with their agreement earlier this week to quell violence and ease tensions. With a 48-hour extended deadline for compliance looming, Jewish settlers and Palestinians exchanged gunfire near Nablus on the West Bank. One Palestinian died and nine other people were wounded. Elsewhere, officials said the closure of Palestinian areas would remain until further notice, barring tens of thousands of workers from reaching their jobs inside Israel.

A crack appeared to be opening in what had been increasingly close relations between South Korea and the rival communist North. The South filed a formal complaint "regretting" what it called a failure to honor a June 15 deal calling for reunions between families separated by the peninsula's 1950-1953 war. Only one such get-together has been held so far, and preparations for the next, Nov. 2-4, have yet to begin. Progress also has stalled on at least four other provisions in the agreement.

US peacekeepers were blocked from patrolling an ethnically tense Bosnian city and were pelted with eggs and fruit as protests over the presence of Muslim residents entered a third day. Agitation in Brcko, one of the major flash points in Bosnia's 3-1/2-year civil war, began with the beating of a Muslim student by Serbs. Later, Muslim-owned businesses and homes were smashed. The peacekeepers were called in after local police lost control of the situation. The 1995 US-brokered Dayton peace agreement failed to resolve which ethnic group would control the city.